The fishermen show him what they've pulled out of Monterey Bay. The Big Sur goat farmer, a former chef at Esalen, brings cave-aged honey lavender manchego. A local mushroom farmer drops by, a waitress brings eggs from her chickens, and vegetable farmers bring their organic harvests. Even owner Gabe Georis' dad comes by with figs, limes and oranges from his orchards.

"Whatever I select that day becomes the building blocks for the menu," said Miller, whose flair with Spanish tapas has injected Carmel's traditional tablecloth dining culture with a shot of seat-of-the-pants unpredictability.

Pintxos, the small plates with toothpick-skewered bites found in bars in Spain's San Sebastián, come out of the kitchen at random times until the ingredients run out.

"People love that every time they come to Mundaka it's different, but they also hate that, too, because they come back for that specific shrimp pintxos and we might not have it that night," Miller said.

But love always conquers disappointment. Business has been so good at Mundaka since it opened in 2009 that Georis recently expanded to the bar next door and the cafe on the other side.

Now Mundaka dominates the Carmel Square courtyard that it shares with a photo gallery, a liquor store and a glass studio.

Mundaka fans can now feast on Miller's creations for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The cafe opens at 9 a.m. to serve Ritual coffee and pintxos, and the bar gets going by lunchtime, with a more traditional, Spanish-inspired pub menu.

"We are doing a style of restaurant that didn't exist in Carmel before," said Georis, who named his restaurant after a surf spot he discovered outside San Sebastián.

"We are looking at quality of local, organic ingredients, and being creative with the menu," he said. "We've created a younger, fun atmosphere that has some energy."

The entertainment at Mundaka is just as unexpected as the menu. One night there might be a flamenco DJ, someone spinning jazz vinyl or belly dancers. Vintage black-and-white movies are projected on the wall.

Mundaka was Georis' way of making his mark outside his family, well known in the area for running stalwart restaurants such as Casanova and La Bicyclette in Carmel, as well as Corkscrew Cafe and Georis Winery in Carmel Valley.

After high school in Pebble Beach, Georis, 34, moved to San Sebastián for a year to learn Spanish and surf. He discovered Basque food, so unlike the food he ate with his family on trips to France and Italy, and returned to Carmel to add Spanish dishes to his family's restaurants. He was having difficulty translating his concept into the restaurants, so he decided to open his own after meeting Miller at a charity event at the Boys & Girls Club of Monterey County.

The two discovered they were kindred spirits in sustainability, and they took off for research trips to Spain that included sumptuous meals and copious refrescos.

They've been working together ever since. With the expansion, Mundaka is still small, seating just 65, including outdoor patio tables.

But it's huge for Miller, who now has a secondary kitchen, enabling him to finally work with larger cooking equipment, such as a sous vide machine and a larger fryer that he couldn't accommodate in his closet-size kitchen in the restaurant.

"Half the dish station was taken up by my meat slicer! Now I finally have a place to put it," Miller said.

Mundaka's expansion includes taking over neighboring Ody's bar, a local watering hole since the '70s. Miller and Georis planned a makeover centered on approachable bar food with an upscale twist such as duck confit wings served with a Spanish sauce.

And in a nod to the hot-dog-shaped "Bill burgers" sold out of a shack between the ninth and 10th holes at the Olympic Club in San Francisco, he is making elongated house-ground burgers of duck, lamb and beef with pork fat, served in a hot dog bun. For those who like breakfast with their bourbon, he's offering a nighttime corned beef hash with soft egg.

The centerpiece of the as-yet-unnamed bar is the magnificent mirror-inlaid wooden bar, an import from the estate of Sally Stanford, who ran one of San Francisco's most notorious brothels in the 1940s, opened a restaurant in Sausalito in 1950 and was elected mayor of Sausalito in 1972.

"With history like that, we could never be one of those mixology bars - we are keeping it an approachable bar with really great, unexpected, food," Miller said.

Mundaka

Mundaka is on the east side of San Carlos Street, between Ocean Avenue and Seventh Avenue, in the Carmel Square courtyard.